The Rising Feminine principle is one that has been suppressed for thousands of years, and now she is beginning to make her way back to Balance, to coexist alongside the Masculine.

Astrologically, the fierier, feistier, darker side of this rising impulse is represented by bodies like the Three Lilith-s, Eris and so on. Today, we have the Mars/Neptune opposition with Black Moon Lilith – prompting this post of reflection. It is a powerful time for spiritual facilitators to look at the Shadow Work hidden in the Rising Feminine Principle, and its relationship with the Masculine. For the astrology of it, please see:http://wp.me/p4OUNS-hI

As far as I am concerned, – and I am deliberately using the ‘I’ here to let you know that this is my perspective – subjective, personal, my understanding of truth – Accept it only if it resonates with you – …

As far as I am concerned, patriarchy is not the sole cause for the downfall of the Feminine – but a reaction to it. As one who has served through the various lifetimes, with memories awakening now, I see that women had a hand to play in it too.

Archeology and memory tells us that we were in the hallowed citadels of spiritual and political power We were in that elevated position, that pride of place.

And we fell. Oh gods how we fell. I remember it very well. I’ve spent time weeping when these memories arose (both as victim and abuser).

Abuses of power, the conflation of Ego with Spiritual Direction, energetic imbalances, sacrifices, slavery, you name it – we did it. As did they, later on.

(even this we/they business is a tenuous one, we’ve all been on both sides of the equation)

Pride takes a hard fall. And when we fell, it ushered about the rise of a new social, political and cultural order – what we describe as patriarchy. Some sources place it to about 7,000 years old in origin (I suspect a little older than that) – but we really need to ask ourselves what came before it, and why it went away.

Patriarchy, as I understand the term, established itself later. In some sense, you could call the Priestesses who abused their power as its first precursors. We did it ourselves, everything else followed afterwards, i.e. the patriarchal rule which we have collectively come to rebel against.

Which is why in this life, I’ve found it very challenging to own my power and establish myself for the work that I came to do – till recently. I sometimes get … very strange emails from people who find it threatening that I do the work that I do – only to realize they are simply projecting the fear of the past that I’d buried deep in my subconscious. I’ll tell you one thing – facing that part of me was the scariest thing I’d ever done.

A great change in my energy came about when I began to look at that part of myself – having healed the ‘victim’ – now to the ‘abuser’ – and it is the current journey I am on. Love, forgiveness and unconditional acceptance seem to be the only way forward for me, and quite likely, for men and women remembering all parts of themselves now.

So what does one do with that information?

I feel that complete healing is possible only once we stop blaming the ‘other team’ which – committed its own brand of perversion against the feminine principle. But it was not they who set the seed, they responded to it and institutionalized a particularly cruel form of exclusion, subjugation and cycles of victimization. And we are now responding to that.

We tend to say that men fear the power of Woman. And part of it is because we are truly powerful. Exceptionally creative, resilient and strong.

But perhaps, for a moment, we can also imagine that at a collective, racial level – we gave them something to fear. And from what I remember – of myself and others from these lifetimes – we did. That does not excuse their attitudes today, but puts it in a different perspective.

And so the cycle began thousands of years ago, till victims and perpetrators changed sides so often that it makes little sense to hold onto those dynamics.

Yes, men have abused women greatly – but the truth is we’ve done the same. There are no hands that are free from that cycle, unless they are ‘fresh arrivals’ to this earthly plane.

I see it all the time in charts of my clients and the movement of those energies through the natal chart, playing out into their day to day realities.

And yes, as a relatively young woman from a racial minority in this life – I too have been abused by men (and other women) in my journey. I get why holding onto those wounds seems like a survival mechanism, I get why the blame-shame dynamic seems like something you have to hold on to so you don’t compromise some sense of self-worth and dignity – up to a point.

I had to let go of just that to actually begin my Path of Service in this life.

Bear in mind that the masculine/feminine duality as a whole is one that we do not need to be entrenched in. When you look at souls from the perspective of lifetimes, as I tend to do in my work, one has to give up the luxury of neat dichotomies, or even of the idea that Y is evil and X is not.

We’ve all been men, we’ve all been women. And we come into incarnation, very often, to experience the ‘other side’ of the polarity.

At least this is what is true for me.

Let it be understood that I am not justifying acts of violence as ‘spiritual balancing acts’, or that I am saying that people should not be held culpable for any act of suppression.

What I am saying is that the cycle will only end the moment we stop running in it.

*** POSTSCRIPT – A friend of mine wrote this in response to reading this post. I really resonated with it and thought it a great inclusion – Quoted here with permission: “Yes it is time to realize we have played all fathoms of the spectrums of a soul. There are reasons why we fell into being suppressed as women but also know that men were also done this way in the history of this Earth. It is time we embrace the duality of who we have been and who we are now. This is what we came to learn. We no longer need to be on one side or the other….we are to come to balance all aspects of our soul. Thank you for your insight and know that this is just my opinion as well” ~Waynie Hoffman, founder of Feminine Spiritual Path on FB.